A summit on exams in Leeds this week will see headteachers and other education professionals raising their own issues, gaining understanding of the national picture and discussing how they can work together to bring about change.

The focus will be on the unprecedented change in grade boundaries of the English GCSE between January and June this year. The changes resulted in many young people across the country being awarded a grade D when, if their papers had been marked in January, they would have received a C.

Other problems which some schools are having with the grading of different subjects and other GCSE English grades will also be discussed.

This summit will allow myself and other head teachers who share my dismay that children can be treated so unfairly to look at how we can work together to get the grade boundaries reversed so children can be awarded their true grades.

These children have been caught in a statistical exercise and their work has been devalued and unrewarded. This has been done to them regardless of the quality of their work. Thousands of children's futures have been detrimentally affected and it has placed these children and their families at risk through no fault of their own.

Councillor Judith Blake, Leeds City Council's executive member for children's services, says that the event was an opportunity for head teachers and other education professionals to share their experiences and find out what the council is already doing to try to remedy what she described as a 'travesty for young people across the country'. Blake adds:

Here in Leeds we determined to get a fair decision for our young people, which is why we are leading the national consortium calling for a judicial review.

Leeds City Council was one of the first organisations to raise concerns into the grading of GCSE English, and has been actively campaigning for the fair treatment of all students who sat the exam. As reported by the Guardian Northernerlast month, Leeds has been leading a consortium involving other local authorities, schools and professional organisations calling for a judicial review on the issue.

The national consortium, which includes many Leeds schools as well as individual pupils, has submitted a formal letter to the examination regulator Ofqual and exam boards AQA and Edexcel, and is currently awaiting a response.